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Thus there is in the Nature-Principle itself an Ideal
archetype of the beauty that is found in material forms and, of
that archetype again, the still more beautiful archetype in Soul,
source of that in Nature. In the proficient soul this is brighter
and of more advanced loveliness: adorning the soul and bringing
to it a light from that greater light which is beauty primally,
its immediate presence sets the soul reflecting upon the quality
of this prior, the archetype which has no such entries, and is
present nowhere but remains in itself alone, and thus is not even
to be called a Reason-Principle but is the creative source of the
very first Reason-Principle which is the Beauty to which Soul
serves as Matter.
This prior, then, is the Intellectual-Principle, the veritable,
abiding and not fluctuant since not taking intellectual quality
from outside itself. By what image thus, can we represent it? We
have nowhere to go but to what is less. Only from itself can we
take an image of it; that is, there can be no representation of
it, except in the sense that we represent gold by some portion of
gold- purified, either actually or mentally, if it be impure-
insisting at the same time that this is not the total thing-gold,
but merely the particular gold of a particular parcel. In the
same way we learn in this matter from the purified Intellect in
ourselves or, if you like, from the Gods and the glory of the
Intellect in them.
For assuredly all the Gods are august and beautiful in a beauty
beyond our speech. And what makes them so? Intellect; and
especially Intellect operating within them [the divine sun and
stars] to visibility. It is not through the loveliness of their
corporeal forms: even those that have body are not gods by that
beauty; it is in virtue of Intellect that they, too, are gods,
and as gods beautiful. They do not veer between wisdom and folly:
in the immunity of Intellect unmoving and pure, they are wise
always, all-knowing, taking cognisance not of the human but of
their own being and of all that lies within the contemplation of
Intellect. Those of them whose dwelling is in the heavens, are
ever in this meditation- what task prevents them?- and from afar
they look, too, into that further heaven by a lifting of the
head. The Gods belonging to that higher Heaven itself, they whose
station is upon it and in it, see and know in virtue of their
omnipresence to it. For all There is heaven; earth is heaven, and
sea heaven; and animal and plant and man; all is the heavenly
content of that heaven: and the Gods in it, despising neither men
nor anything else that is there where all is of the heavenly
order, traverse all that country and all space in peace.
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